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Table of Contents

The following guide outlines how to play a Standard build of the popular Warlock
Zoo deck. Zoo lost a lot of powerful Deathrattle minions in the switch over to
Standard but also gained a lot of powerful cards to synergise with their token
focused strategy meaning that the deck is still in a very strong place overall.

The Karazhan Adventure introduced Malchezaar's Imp to the format, which
encourages you to play additional Discard cards in your deck. This deck adds in
extra Soulfires, but still tries true to the consistent Zoo strategy
instead of moving towards a full Discard based strategy.

1. About the Author

This deck is presented to you by Sottle,
a professional Hearthstone player who plays for compLexity Gaming.
Sottle regularly streams on Twitch and explains all of his moves. Watching him is a good opportunity to see how
this and other decks play out in practice, and how decisions are made in real time.

2.1. Mana Curve

1

15

6

4

2

2

0

0

3. Strategy

The general strategy of Zoo is to aggressively build a
board with small efficient minions and use your numerous buff cards to
create favourable trades into higher cost minions. Combining this with the
Warlock's Life Tap Hero Power, you can quickly overwhelm your opponent with
card draw and create an imposing board state that they will not be
able to answer.

A common mistake for newer players with this deck is to
prioritise attacking the opponent’s life total directly. Instead you should
focus on making favourable trades to maintain minions on the board and
create more damage over time. Choosing the right moment to attack your opponent directly
and push for the win is a skill you
can develop over time, not just with this deck, but with Hearthstone in general. As a
general rule with this deck though, you are looking to trade and create an advantage
over time.

Another key to playing this deck at a high level
is minion positioning. When playing minions onto the board always consider
cards like Defender of Argus which rely on
minion positions to apply their unique effects. For example, if you intend
to apply a Defender of Argus buff to a Argent Squire you will want to place
the Squire in the middle of your board to maximise the options of which other minion
to taunt. Other positional concerns with this deck are Dire Wolf Alpha and
Imp Gang Boss. When positioning for Dire Wolf, keep your opponents expected
play for the next turn in mind at all times and plan in advance how you would most
efficiently trade into it using Dire Wolf, placing your minions accordingly. Also keep
in mind that Imp Gang Boss will spawn tokens immediately to the right of it, and keep
that it mind when factoring in Defender of Argus and Dire Wolf Alpha
on following turns.

The early game is extremely important with this deck, so in the early turns
you want to quickly establish a board advantage. The key cards to facilitate
this are Flame Imp, Argent Squire, Possessed Villager, Voidwalker, and
Abusive Sergeant. Using combinations of high health minions, Deathrattles or Divine Shields
alongside the buff from Abusive Sergeant you can begin to remove your opponent's early minions whilst keeping your own
alive, creating a board advantage that you can compound on in the later turns.
Malchezaar's Imp is another potential 1-drop that you can play out early,
but unless you have no other options, it is usually better to attempt to get
value from this card later with a Discard combo.

Dark Peddler is a card that introduces a ton of flexibility to your early-game
turns. If you have a Peddler in hand, you have the option of using it directly on
turn 2, or playing an alternate 2-drop on turn 2, and following up with the Peddler on
turn 3, safe in the knowledge that you will get a 1 Mana card to fill out your curve. This
level of flexibility brings a lot of security to your mulligan process. As long as you
have a Peddler in your opening hand, you are almost guaranteed to get a smooth opening. The power
of Dark Peddler in the deck is amplified even further by the fact that so many of the
Warlock 1 Mana cards are valuable for this deck. Power Overwhelming, Soulfire,
Mortal Coil, Voidwalker, and Flame Imp are all valuable.

Moving into the mid-game your Token generation becomes extremely powerful through usage
of cards such as Forbidden Ritual and Imp Gang Boss. Building a board quickly
like this has incredible benefits for cards like Knife Juggler, and
Darkshire Councilman. Darkshire Councilman in particular is a card that can easily
snowball out of your opponent's control if they are unable to deal with it immediately. Despite this
fact, your board state is a lot more fragile to AoE effects in Standard since you lose
access to most of of the powerful Deathrattle minions that previously acted as your
insurance policy. Because of this, it is important to keep in mind your opponent's AoE options
and adjust your board accordingly to play around the amount of damage their relevant cards
can do.

Forbidden Ritual is a slightly awkward card to use effectively in this
deck. Since it mandates the use of your entire Mana pool on any given turn, it
can be hard to use Discard cards while this card is in your hand, since it will
be difficult to empty your hand first. With this in mind it is usually worth using
Forbidden Ritual at the earliest opportunity even if it is only for 2 or 3 Imps.

Your goal with this deck is to maintain board dominance and to defend
cards like Darkshire Councilman to maintain pressure. This makes trading as
efficiently as possible extremely important for the deck as it will limit your
opponent's options in terms of how to deal with your board. If you start being too
aggressive too early, your opponent will have more flexibility in terms of how to clear
your board, and since this deck plays very few recovery mechanics you are depending on
being ahead on the board at all times. It is important to make an aggressive push at some
point however, as without doing so you can find yourself being outvalued by your opponent's
late-game minions if you have spent too much time trading. Generally the right time to
start pushing damage through to your opponent is when you are confident that they have
no realistic way of clearing your board and when you have extra damage in hand to back
up your aggression.

As mentioned previously Malchezaar's Imp should often be held onto until you get
immediate value since it is such a powerful engine for digging through your deck
to find power cards like Doomguard. This is also true in the late-game
where Malchezaar's Imp can be used to cycle useless late-game cards like
Flame Imp by discarding them and looking for something more powerful.
The goal of the additional cycle in your deck is to allow you to dig through
a higher percentage of your deck and pick up more power cards like Darkshire Councilman,
Doomguard, and Soulfire to be able to end the game.

Malchezaar's Imp can be used to turn discarding cards into a positive thing
by replacing weak cards in your hand.

3.2. Mulligans & Matchup Specific Strategies

General mulligan strategy involves pushing aggressively for a Flame Imp and other
1-drops. With The Coin, a hand of multiple 2-drops is excellent, as you can use
The Coin to play a 2-drop on each of the first two turns. Without the coin a more standard
curve of creatures costing 1-3 Mana is preferable. Dark Peddler is another excellent
card to look for in your opening hand as it creates a huge amount of flexibility with how
you can choose to play your opening turns.

Against other aggressive decks that look to have a fast start such as Hunter,
Tempo Mage, or other Zoos, your best opening is Voidwalker, Possessed Villager,
or Argent Squire as they are both key cards early against aggro.
These minions can trade very favourably into opposing small minions, especially when
targetted with an Abusive Sergeant buff.